


lucky kind

by beardsley



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-19
Updated: 2013-10-19
Packaged: 2017-12-29 21:14:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1010171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beardsley/pseuds/beardsley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU: Stacker and Mako are the only survivors.</p>
            </blockquote>





	lucky kind

**Author's Note:**

> One day I will write a happy Pacific Rim story, but today is not that day. This is your warning, btw.

Stacker wakes up.

He's not sure at first whether he's in Lima or Tokyo or somewhere else entirely. The med bay at his first base, back in England, looked exactly like this one: generic and clean. The staff who come in have their faces covered with surgical masks and their uniforms are as simplistic and nonspecific as the walls of the room Stacker is in. He tries to move, but thick padded restraints are hugging his ankles and he's only strong enough to sit up about three quarters of the way. The first time he does it a tall thin man in a white lab coat comes in with a syringe filled with clear liquid. That's when Stacker notices he's hooked up to an IV.

He tracks the man's movements as he injects something into the IV line and before he's out the door Stacker's eyes are drifting shut.

The next time he wakes up he can sit up all the way. The room looks less claustrophobic and blank; there are flowers on the windowsill and a laptop on the nightstand. When he turns, it's to see Mako looking at him with wide eyes and a tight twist to her mouth. All it does is make Stacker want to touch her. When she was little (or, really, when she was a pain-in-the-ass teenager) she used to get glum moods and all it took was a long and relentless hug for her to fold.

'How do you feel?' she asks. Her voice is tight, too, but it doesn't shake.

Stacker shrugs as much as he can. 'Like a giant deep sea monster chewed me up and spat me back out. How am I doing?'

'You're doing well.' Mako sighs and switches to Japanese. 'The doctors all told me you're going to be all right, but you need to take it easy for the next few weeks. There was a lot of damage. The shockwave — I think your conn-pod wasn't far enough from it and it shook you up quite a lot.'

Stacker takes it in, nodding when Mako is finished. There was a point in his life when he was scared of dying, but that was before Luna; it was before Tamsin. It was before he knew he was already a dead man walking, the machine that saved thousands and thousands of lives killing him from the inside. For a few years — for a few years after Luna died he kept going. There was a little girl who looked at him with open unashamed wonder. Mako is all grown up now, though.

'And you?' he asks. 'How do you feel, Mako?'

'I'm alive,' she says. There are dark circles under her eyes, and when she reaches out to rest her hand on Stacker's hand, he gets it. He doesn't need to be told.

There was only one survivor from Danger.

Stacker closes his eyes. 'That's all we ever have to work with,' he says. He hears Mako echo his words, and they sit in silence for a long time.

~

'It should've been me.'

Herc is helping him get back on his feet — time and again, like clockwork or taxes or death — and Stacker still needs assistance to get from his hospital bed to his hospital bathroom to his hospital shower. Mako tried to be there, tried to do it, but she has two broken legs; she's in worse shape than he is. He should be helping her, for god's sake.

So it falls to Herc, like it fell to Herc after Tamsin, like it fell to Stacker after Angela. They're resilient bastards, if nothing else.

But, 'It should've been me,' says Herc, nearly quiet enough that Stacker could pretend not to hear.

(He never pretended not to hear. He heard: 'I don't know if I did the right thing,' and 'She told me to, she told me to get him,' and 'He's my goddamn brother, jesus christ,' and he heard: 'Don't you motherfucking dare give up on me, Stacks, you got a little girl who lives and breathes for you and you got _me_ , don't you even fucking try to give up —')

There's nothing to say here except, 'Maybe.'

Herc stares at him.

'But you're alive,' says Stacker. Herc's arm is around his waist, holding him up, but Stacker leans heavier on his crutches. He takes a step towards the shower stall, and another, and when Herc lets him go he strips out of his pants. He's weaker than a kid, but fuck him if he's gonna ask for sponge baths; he's had worse. He runs the shower. He holds himself up, and ignores the burn in his arms. He ignores the ache in his ribs. He ignores the pained, abject, deafening silence from Herc.

'You're alive,' he says again, louder to be heard over the noise. 'We're soldiers, all of us. We die for our cause or we live to fight another day, and if you think I wouldn't give anything to make sure you get to live to fight another day with your son —'

'Shut up, Stacks.'

'Blame me,' Stacker says instead. He doesn't turn; he doesn't want to see Herc. 'Blame me, it was my plan. _I_ survived and _I_ didn't save the kid, _I_ didn't save Becket and it was my goddamn plan. Blame me. But don't you fucking blame yourself.'

In the ringing silence that follows Stacker gets in the shower, and the scalding hot water brings instant relief to his aching shoulders. He closes his eyes and breathes, easy and calm just like he taught Mako ages and ages ago when she was a little girl who needed him. (She's all grown up now and she needs him, still. He's all grown up and he needs her and won't ever stop. He's all grown up and he needs —)

'If you weren't a fuckin' invalid I'd sock you right on the jaw right now,' Herc says, hoarse.

Stacker smiles and doesn't open his eyes. 'Like that's ever stopped you before.'

He doesn't open his eyes. He waits for Herc to get in the shower with him. He doesn't wait long.

The water is scalding, but so are Herc's hands on his back. It's relief. It's what he needs; always has, always will.

~

Mako doesn't cry. Tendo does. The service is long; a lot of soldiers died that day, and all of them deserve respect. It's a hassle to organise a funeral service in three separate religious denominations, but it's the least Stacker can do. He's still on crutches, Mako warm and solid on his right and Herc big and unmoving on his left and two steps behind, and both their eyes are bloodshot and downcast and Stacker is selfish enough to be glad, deliriously glad, that they're both alive.

He's selfish and glad that he's burying his daughter's copilot and his best friend's kid, because the alternative would break him.

He's selfish and glad, and he locks himself in his hospital room, then in his bathroom, to take the pills he's got hidden in a locked drawer.

He tips his head back and wipes the blood from his nose and upper lip.


End file.
